what Steve is doing on The Cloud – Day 28 of 30

Steve woke up this morning and had to acknowledge that, in spite of himself, he must be changing, becoming a new person, exactly as Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross had predicted. What else could explain his erratic behavior the last few days?

Last Friday he was hot on the trail of inventing a method of communicating with The Earth, so he could talk to Tim Cook and save Apple from self-destructing.

Then on Saturday he wasted the entire day playing around with John Lennon and the girls.

Sunday was supposed to be the day he talked Douglas Adams and Arthur C. Clarke into putting their heads together and coming up with a communications solution, but Doug had refused to cooperate. “For your own good,” he had said, or something like that. Steve had always been able to talk people into doing things they didn’t think they could do, but this time it didn’t work.

At least Clarke was interested in the problem. But then yesterday, Monday, when he and Clarke were deep into a trance that Steve knew would have produced awesome results, suddenly he was crying, all because Gandhi touched him. And it wasn’t just a few tears, either.

What would happen today? Clarke had not come out of the trance and was tucked away in the looney bin, with a prognosis of “Give it some time and we’ll see.” Gandhi and Siri were expecting him in The Square for a visit, they had said, but Steve suspected it would be more like another lesson on “how to live on The Cloud.” And John Lennon and Doug Adams, who had become best pals all of a sudden, had invited him to join them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

If he went to The Square to see Gandhi, went to eat with John and Doug, went to work like he was expected to, he would have no time today to devote to Apple. Steve felt like he was splitting—there was a fierce tug-of-war going on between “old Steve” and “new Steve”. Was this what it felt like to be schizophrenic?

Just then he heard stirrings and realized that he had stayed in bed too long, and now Newton was waking up, and he would have to make time to talk to him, too!

Steve turned over, buried his face in his sleep sack, and decided the best course of action was to play dead and not get up at all. Everyone—on The Cloud and The Earth—would just have to cope without him. There was a faint voice in his head: